


At a Live Heart

by Violsva



Category: Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Ambiguity, F/F, Fairy Tale Retellings, Magical Realism, No happy endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5019133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robin knew she was watching. And when she finally showed herself, she was strange, and secretive. But fascinating. Far too fascinating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At a Live Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BatchSan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BatchSan/gifts).



> Thanks to [consultingpiskies](http://archiveofourown.org/users/consultingpiskies/pseuds/consultingpiskies) for being reassuring. <3

Her hair was greyish-blonde, and shaggy. That was all I saw the first few times. That was the only way I knew she was there at all.

The forest around you always feels like a presence; you feel as if you are being watched even if no one is there but squirrels. So I don’t know when she started watching me, only when she started letting me see her.

For I went every week. Mother complained that grandmother was stubborn, and silly, living out in the woods apart from everyone instead of at home where she would be respected and taken care of. She should be in the village, and then someone wouldn’t have to go every week and take her the food she couldn’t find herself and make sure she was still safe. She had duties she was ignoring, living in the forest alone as no one should.

The other elder women said nothing to my mother, but I saw how they looked at each other. They gave me other things to take to grandmother, usually wrapped up, and sometimes grandmother sent things back for them. Never anything for mother, though.

So I went every week, past the palisade and the cornfields to the trees. Sometimes I agreed with mother, when my feet already hurt or I was bored or I’d wanted to spend the afternoon doing something else, but lately I had grown to like the walks.

At her small solitary house, grandmother would mutter to herself as she looked through the basket, and sometimes send me home again, but sometimes she’d tell me to sit down and we would talk. She told stories.

I liked the adventures best. The first human, and his quest to make the world fit him; the Rabbit and his shapeshifting; the first priestess’s fights against the wolf-people, the pale shining ones. But she told all kinds, and mixed them up with herb knowledge. She gave advice as well, but only if asked, and I was mostly too shy to ask.

Sometimes she told me things that ought to be in a story, but didn’t seem to be. She explained how to recognize the shining ones (by what they could not change, their ears, their eyes, their feet). She told me you should always keep your hair braided in the woods, or the shining ones would tie you to them with it. She told me to stay away from rings of mushrooms and pure white animals, and to carry rowan twigs if I had to go off the path. I waited for stories to explain the reasons, but they never came. If she had kept me long, though, she would give me bread and berries and tisane. Once in a while she would have something for me to take back to the village.

And then I would turn back for home, and see, just as I left the clearing where grandmother lived, a swirl of yellowish-grey hair just where the undergrowth was thickest. Usually you could see quite far between the trees, but I didn’t see more of her than that for the longest time. I was not sure who or what she was, until I saw her fully, and remembered the pale flashes I’d seen before.

That time, I was leaving the village, and she seemed to be going towards it. She was certainly not from there, or any village nearby. No one in the village had such light hair. Or such light brown, almost grey, skin. There was something wrong with her eyes as well, but I didn’t see what it was at first. She was standing on the path, and though I thought I had been looking straight in front of me I hadn’t seen her at all.

“Robin,” she said, and I jumped.

“How do you know my name?”

“It suits you,” she said, running a hand along the shoulder of my red dress. Though her hair was greyish, as light as grandmother’s, she did not look old.

I waited for her to give me hers. She smiled at me. “Where are you going?”

I bit my lip. I’d seen her hair before, I knew I had. She knew where I was going. “My grandmother’s,” I said. “And you?”

When she still did not answer, only stood calmly in front of me, I said, “Are you going far?”

“Not too far,” she said, still smiling. She smiled with her mouth mostly closed. The sliver of her teeth flashed very white. She still did not move, not at all.

“I – I have to go,” I said.

She turned and waved her hand to her side with elaborate grace, and I followed it past her without thinking. Then my feet quickened by themselves, and I was yards away from her before I slowed down. By the time I looked back I had surely gone too far to see her, if she was still there.

I wouldn’t ask mother, I thought as I kept walking. I wouldn’t ask my friends, and probably spread rumours. I was supposed to tell the elders, of course.

“Who else lives in the woods?” I asked grandmother.

She looked up from the contents of the basket, and shook her head. “Haven’t I been telling you for years now?” she asked.

I stared. “You’ve told me stories,” I said.

She shook her head, and muttered, “Your mother...”

“Everything I told you about is there,” she said more clearly. “Have you dismissed them entirely, thinking of them as stories, or do you remember them?”

“Of course I remember them,” I said, stung.

“Tell me about the shining ones, then.”

“They can disguise their looks, and change into animals, usually wolves, but sometimes cats or cougars or bears. They may steal children, and they have magic with knots and names, and you should never eat anything they give you. The first priestess fought them for our right to live here, cut down trees, and grow corn.”

“Good enough. And the river people?”

She quizzed me for a while, and I tried to remember her stories. She seemed satisfied enough, and I reminded myself to think of all of it as fact in the future. It seemed very distant still, though grandmother insisted that the stories were all true. “Have you met someone, or only seen them?” she asked afterwards. “A man?”

“No,” I said. I would have said, “A woman,” but grandmother pulled my face close to hers to look me in the eye, then nodded.

“You know better than to follow men you don’t know into the forest, I hope,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. My voice came out uncertain, and I added more firmly, “Yes, I know that.”

“Good,” she said. “I have some things for you to take back.” She went to get them, and I stayed seated in her clearing. I had been waiting for her to ask about women, and she hadn’t. Were these spirits never women, then? Were the women less dangerous?

Grandmother knew all the land around her and the village. If there was a harmful female spirit nearby, she would have warned me. The woman could not be a spirit, then, just a stranger. I didn’t know why I was so relieved.

As I walked home, I saw nothing except for flashes of movement in the corners of my eyes, that disappeared when I turned towards them. But I kept turning towards them, the whole way home.

The next week, she appeared again – it truly did seem like she was _appearing_ , rather than arriving in any more usual manner. I thought of what grandmother had said, but her ears were hidden behind her hair and her eyes made me breathless and her moccasins were laced up her ankles to meet the bottom of her leggings. She was so polite this time, not so still and intimidating as she had been. And her height, her strength, the curve of her jaw...

“Shall I walk with you a ways?” she asked, and I said, “All right.”

She asked me if I knew the names of plants we saw, and told me what they cured or harmed, and I told her what I knew of them. Once she caught my arm and pointed behind the trees, and I looked and saw grey, slightly spotted fur in the distance. It turned, and was a long-eared cat, black markings around its eyes, looking straight at me.

I held still, very aware of everything in my surroundings, but especially of the woman leaning against me to look herself. The cat did not blink or move its face, but after some time, I had no idea how long, it loped off behind the trees.

Her hand was still on my arm, her breath on my neck. I couldn’t move until she turned first.

“I haven’t seen one alive before,” I whispered. “I thought they only came out at night.”

“They prefer night, but may be out at any time.” Her voice brushed against my ear. “Come, let’s go.”

She left me well before we came in sight of grandmother’s clearing. I didn’t quite see how she went. I thought that I should mention her to grandmother, and then I forgot to. Grandmother was busy that day anyway, and I only stayed a little.

I looked for traces of the woman on the way home, but I saw nothing until she appeared before me herself, all at once.

“You’ve left early,” she said. “She is well?”

“Oh,” I said, still off balance from the suddenness of her arrival. “Yes, she is well. Do you know her?”

Like all of my personal questions, she did not answer it. “Are you expected back at once?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I often take longer.” Only after saying it did I realize she might be inviting me – where? To what?

She smiled. “Will you come with me, then? I’ve something to show you.”

I remembered the lynx. I remembered her breath against my neck as we stared at the lynx. I said, “Which way?”

She gestured at the forest, as dramatic and unspecific as all of her sweeping motions. She reached for my hand, and I let her take it.

“I shouldn’t go off the path,” I remembered belatedly. She paused.

“Shouldn’t you? It is a clear day, and you can see far between the trees. How would you get lost?” She smiled at me – right into my eyes, we were so close – and added, “You must know this area well, having lived here so long.”

Her eyes were deep, drawing me in, light amber with a dark ring around the iris. That was ... something, something I should be thinking about. But she was looking so directly at me, into me, wanting me to come with her, and of course I wanted to follow her. “Yes,” I whispered. “I know it.”

Her hand clasped mine more tightly. She pulled me off the path.

It should have been clear and dry, with only weeds growing between the tree trunks. The ground this time of year should have been soft decaying leaves. And it was, for a few steps. But the space between the trees grew darker quickly, too quickly. I turned to look behind me, but she pulled me around. I realized, at that odd time, that I still did not know her name. Then she pulled me into a bush that reached higher than my head, and I was lost in a dark green haze.

It stayed with me, even when I thought there must be more light around. Everything and everyone seemed to be behind a screen of pine needles. For there were other people with us, now, crowding us, talking too fast and singing too loudly. I didn’t know them, and none of them looked even vaguely familiar; they were all the wrong shape, or colour, and their movements were too fast. Some of them seemed to have the heads or limbs of animals. A fox growled in my face, then laughed as I jumped. My companion was still holding fast to my hand, but she did not pull me away from them.

Another two caught hold of me, and I was twisted around between them. I clutched at my companion’s hand tightly, though she had brought me here. They passed us between them, under their arms and behind their backs and perhaps even over their shoulders, in a wild dance my companion followed perfectly, dragging me stumbling behind her. Something pulled at my skirt, and ripped it. For a second I thought we had switched places, and I held my own hand, and stared at my own face.

Then she was back, all grey and yellow, twirling me in her arms and spinning me out at arm’s reach until someone – something – nearly caught me in its claws. I clutched at her instinctively, and closed my eyes against the changing ever-moving shapes around us.

“Let’s leave,” I gasped. “Let’s go – where are we – let’s go somewhere else, somewhere quiet -”

“Yes,” she said. “All right, little Robin, let’s run from the storms.”

Then my vision whirled again, and I was in a small dark green space. She was the only one there, blonde and pale and amber-eyed, but though the noise had gone the constant motion had not stopped, and behind her the green swam nauseatingly. My feet did not seem to be resting on anything, and I felt as though there was no sky above us but could not pull my eyes from hers to look.

“Where are we?” I gasped, then, “Where _were_ we?”

“Nowhere,” she said, and it did not sound like evasion. I tore my eyes from hers and the green swirling darkness seemed to close in around me. I saw her free hand reaching slowly for my face. “Look at me,” she said, but something red flashed at the side of my vision and I turned to see what it was.

It was a cardinal. I reached up for it instinctively, and instead of flying away as it ought to have done it landed on my hand.

I thought my companion touched me, tried to turn me, but suddenly all my focus was on the bird, and I _could_ focus on it, as I couldn’t on the background. It jumped off my hand, flew a little into the instability around us, then came back. When it took off again I followed it, desperately hoping it could take me out of here, to somewhere fixed, stable, real and familiar.

The woman’s hand tightened around mine. I pulled her arm, to bring her with me, but she didn’t move at all. The cardinal was flying further away, and I could not let it out of my sight.

I ran after it, and my hand slipped from hers. At once the dizziness was a hundred times worse, but the red spot of the cardinal remained in front of me. My feet landed on solid earth. Leaves and twigs crunched beneath them, and that was the right sound, the right feeling: I was in the forest again. The green at my eye level faded slowly into grey tree trunks, and above and below me it turned to simple, ordinary leaf patterns.

I was still dizzy, but the world was real instead of shifting uncertainty. The cardinal landed on a branch, cocked its head at me, and then flew out of my sight.

I staggered and leaned against a tree in my dizziness. Nothing was immediately familiar. The world slowly settled around me, and I looked in every direction, trying to find a landmark. Then I looked up. I was propped up against a rowan tree, the compound leaves clearly silhouetted against the returned sky. I held on to it more firmly, trying to remember. It felt like I had forgotten all the lore I had learnt as soon as I had looked into her eyes, but it was there, barely, if I reached for it.

I took hold of a branch for steadiness, and followed it to its end. I asked permission first, feeling obscurely that I must follow the exact rituals I had been taught even now. I broke a twig off, and held it in my hand. Then I turned the way it seemed to be pulling me, and walked.

I don’t know if I would have done it in my right mind, but I was so exhausted and confused that evening that I simply walked in a daze wherever felt right, and at last stumbled through the trees in front of the palisade. It was dark by then, and I went halfway around before I found the entrance. There were guards there that night, and they stared at me for a long moment before I came fully into the light.

“Robin!” said one, and though I knew his voice I found I could not tell and did not care who he was. He and his companion took my arms, and as soon as there was other support for my weight my legs gave out and I slumped between them.

The journey home was grey and endless in my mind; the time before was a dark green blur. Of the time after my return, I remember warmth and firelight and hot drinks, and voices talking about things I could not bring myself to care about. Blankets were wrapped around me, and hands brushed my face, and I ought to have known who they belonged to but did not.

At last I slept, surrounded by the familiar sounds and smells of the longhouse.

Perhaps that familiarity seeped into my dreams and helped me recover, for the next day I was better, and the next better still. But I couldn’t remember what had happened to me or where I had gone, just the dark disorienting swirls and, faintly, glowing eyes and the sound of music and laughter. I told them that, and no one could tell me what had happened. They had all, they said, been worried; people had searched up and down the path, and not found me. Grandmother had not been able to find me.

Most people, I suspected, thought that I had fallen asleep, but the elders clearly didn’t. They kept asking, and I could tell them nothing more. A piece was missing from my skirt, and I could not remember why.

I remembered the blonde woman, though. I remembered every detail of her, everything we both had said. But my throat closed when I tried to speak of her. I managed to ask if there had been strangers in the area, recently, and there hadn’t been, and I couldn’t tell them why I wanted to know. I stopped trying to ask, and let myself recover.

I could easily stand without dizziness days before I would normally go to see grandmother again. Mother still worried, I saw. But I told her I was perfectly capable of going into the woods, and wanted to, and eventually she agreed.

For I wanted to see the woman again. I should want to stay away from her, but I never considered the possibility. Sometimes I wanted to rage at her, sometimes I wanted to listen to her – she had told me of the forest, surely she could tell me truly what had happened? Sometimes I wanted to grab her close to me and – and – shake her – or – but I always wanted to see her.

And mother did have things to send to grandmother, and the elders had a whole second basket for me. So I insisted I would go, and would not let them even suggest that there were many others to take my place, at least just for one week.

The elders wanted to send a woodsman with me, as a guard. I told them I would be fine, be safe, stay on the path. I didn’t want anyone with me. I knew she wouldn’t come if there was someone else with me. Most of the men clearly thought it was unnecessary, and at last the elders let me go alone.

I looked for her every step of the way. I scanned the bushes on either side, peering behind the trees, staring as far as I could past them. I searched for greying blonde hair and amber eyes and quick movements. There was nothing there.

I tried to go a few steps casually, not looking directly but waiting for her to appear, since she had always been only motion in the corner of my eye before. I couldn’t stop looking, though, turning my head in every direction. She was never there, and there was no motion at the edges of my vision – hardly any motion in the forest at all.

The path was slow when I was so constantly distracted, but at last I reached grandmother’s clearing with no sign of the blonde woman. Often grandmother would be outside at this time of day, but she wasn’t there either, and the door of her small round house was closed.

As I approached I saw, and picked up, a red scrap on the ground. It was the piece that had been torn from my dress; it fit perfectly into the rip. I turned around wildly, searching, hoping it was a sign that the blonde woman was nearby, but all was still.

Besides, I was here for grandmother. I should be thinking of her, not the strange woman, no matter what had happened last week. I reached up to push open her door.


End file.
